Emily Houri­can to speak at can­cer con­fer­ence

THE Liv­ing with Can­cer Con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by NECRET and Pro­fes­sor Bryan Hen­nessy is ded­i­cated to peo­ple im­pacted by can­cer will take place this year from 1.30pm on Septem­ber 23rd in the City North Ho­tel. NECRET be­ing the char­ity who sup­port the On­col­ogy and Hae­ma­tol­ogy in Our Lady of Lour­des Hos­pi­tal.

As one of Ire­land’s lead­ing med­i­cal on­col­o­gists Pro­fes­sor Bryan Hen­nessy ex­plains about the Liv­ing with Can­cer Event is “one ma­jor ben­e­fit we re­al­ized that at times peo­ple feel more com­fort­able ask­ing a range of ques­tions that they might not nec­es­sar­ily ask in the clin­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. “

Join­ing Pro­fes­sor Hen­nessy this year on the can­cer spe­cial­ist panel will be well known Doc­tor David Fen­nelly from St Vin­cent’s Hos­pi­tal in Dublin. Both will also be speak­ing and avail­able to an­swer ques­tions that peo­ple who are liv­ing with can­cer may have or that their fam­ily or friends would like to ask. It is very much an open, re­laxed and com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment to get more in­for­ma­tion on the var­i­ous types of can­cer and the lat­est treat­ments or de­vel­op­ments re­lated to that.

Other guests this year will be peo­ple known in the public eye who cur­rently or have pre­vi­ously ex­pe­ri­enced can­cer or have had a close rel­a­tive suf­fer with can­cer. The speak­ers all who have been very can­did about how their lives have been im­pacted in­clude Tom­mie Gor­man from RTE and Emily Houri­can from the Sun­day In­de­pen­dent.

Speak­ing pre­vi­ously on the Today with Sean O’Rourke he de­tailed how he has been suf­fer­ing from metastatic pan­creas neu­roen­docrine tu­mour - a rel­a­tive of the rare form of car­ci­noid can­cer that he was first di­ag­nosed with in 1994 and re­vealed how he con­sid­ers each year he has lived with it as “a bless­ing”.

Jour­nal­ist and au­thor Emily Houri­can has de­scribed her own bat­tle with the dis­ease through her Can­cer Di­aries. Tom­mie and Emily will be joined by for­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Mary O’Rourke.

Other ar­eas cov­ered on the day will that of the im­pact on can­cer on fi­nances by Dave Ka­vanagh while on a lighter note Louise Carolan from Steps to Well­ness will ex­plain the con­cept of laugh­ter yoga fol­lowed by a demon­stra­tion.

Also at the con­fer­ence will be a well­ness ex­hi­bi­tion that will run at the same time. At­ten­dees are en­cour­aged to avail of the free com­ple­men­tary ther­apy work­shops at the event. For the ladies make-overs will be avail­able from the Boots No 7 and Look Good Feel Bet­ter Ire­land teams.

The con­fer­ence opens from 1.30pm with speak­ers start­ing from 2pm. Tick­ets for the event cost €10 and in­clude re­fresh­ments, free ther­a­pies and en­try into a fab­u­lous prize draw.